Join us for a two-day programme of panels and performances centring bodily knowledge in the Caucasus and Central Asia
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The moving, sounding, performing body exists at an intersection with the world, both animating and sensing relations with it. Taking gestures, acts, sounds, and movements across Central Asia and the Caucasus as a starting point, this gathering centres embodied knowledge to ask how the performative both responds to shifting socio-political structures and shapes new forms of being.
What forms of memory, resilience, and knowledge move through the body? What does attending to the body stir in pre-existing historical and art historical narratives? What alternative forms of witnessing and storytelling emerge through performance’s liveness, with its impermanence and immateriality?
Through contributions by artists, academics, curators, and writers in multiple formats, A history in acts and gestures imagines ways toward expanded histories and genealogies of the performative in the region, exploring their capacity to animate how subjectivity, embodiment, and collective existence might be understood or reshaped otherwise.
I understand everything, 1989-90s
Oil on canvas
Menlibayeva’s interdisciplinary practice spans a wide array of mediums, including painting, printmaking, video, photography, performance and textile. The artist often addresses the role of women and identity, ecology, energy and neo-colonialism. She also weaves in indigenous cosmologies and mythologies, providing a nuanced perspective on the region’s evolving identity.
The title I Understand Everything is inspired by Almagul’s early painting of the same name from 1989–90, which depicts semi-abstract images fragmented into grids. Its forms mirror the disarray of a collapsing system and the search for new cultural and political identities, and capture the sense of perplexity and uncertainty of the era caused by the economic hardships, social unrest and the urgent call for change.
Participants include:
Ruben Arevshatyan, Andrius Arutiunian, Ännäs Bağdat, Medina Bazarğali, Uta Bekaia, Syrlybek Bekbotaev, Anuar Duisenbinov, Leah Feldman, Ana Gzirishvili, Angela Harutyunyan, Aigerim Kapar & Antonina van Lier & Aigerim Ospan (Artcom Platform), Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev, Ermek Kazmuhambetov, Diana Kudaibergen, Kyzyl Tractor (Said Atabekov & Smail Bayaliev & Arystanbek Shalbayev), Lovozero, Jamilya Nurkalieva, Irena Popiashvili, Elena Razlogova, SAMRATTAMA, Vija Skangale, Yuliya Sorokina, Zere.
Co-convened by:
Dina Akhmadeeva (Tate Modern)
Leah Feldman (University of Chicago)
Inga Lace (Almaty Museum of Arts)
This event is organised by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor, in collaboration with the Almaty Museum of Arts.
The panel Resonances of Belonging: Sonic Roots and Sonic Presence is co-convened together with Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture.
Participation is free of charge but places are limited. Please complete the registration form to apply by 23:59 Almaty time on September 28. Attendance is confirmed upon receipt of an official invitation letter from the museum no later by 12:00 on September 30.
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